Stephen King Gave Teenage Film Students the Rights to One of His Stories for $1

The Dollar Babies project has been around for over 40 years.

Master of horror Stephen King sold the film rights to his short story Stationary Bike to students at the Blaenau Gwent Film Academy in Tredegar, Wales for a whopping $1.

As reported by LA Times (via Mashable), the film’s screenplay is written by 16-year-old Alfie Evans and 14-year-old Cerys Cliff. Roughly 30 students are expected to work on the project. Stationary Bike is one of the stories included in King’s collection Just After Sunset.

The Best Movies Based on Stephen King Stories

"We pretty much e-mailed his secretary, Margaret, and she came back to us in 24 hours, and we told her what we wanted to do, that it's not for profit, that our students would be making it, and she sent us a contract through which was signed by Stephen King himself,” said Blaenau Gwent teacher Kevin Phillips.

This project was born out of King's Dollar Babies initiative, which began over 40 years ago to grant budding filmmakers the film rights to stories of his that aren’t currently under binding movie contracts. This program notably allowed Frank Darabont to adapt King’s story The Woman in the Room into a short film back in 1983. You may recognize Darabont as the director of The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist: three highly successful Stephen King adaptations.

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For other films based off of Stephen King stories, check out our list of the top 10 Stephen King movies and read our review of last year’s IT, which we called “Amazing” saying, "Director Andy Muschietti evokes the horror author’s effortless melodrama and in-your-face psychological torments simultaneously, because he seems to understand that these sensibilities bring out the best and, by definition, the worst in one another."